


It's All Relative

by kashinoha



Category: Leverage
Genre: Abuse of Metaphors, Fluff, OT3, Quinn gets it, lycanthropy as a plot point, pass around the sass potato
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-22 05:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8274583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashinoha/pseuds/kashinoha
Summary: The team admits, with no little reluctance, that they are the only ones for the job when Chaos gets himself into hot water. Meanwhile, Eliot is dealing with his own issues.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cardinalstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinalstar/gifts).



> This is for the lovely Cardinalstar, who has been so supportive of my writing and who everyone should take a hint from if they ever want to see a stellar example of how to leave fic feedback. Happy Birthday, dear! Thank you for leaving the most wonderful, heartwarming, and awesome comments on my fics!

 

**It's All Relative  
**

All characters © Chris Downey and John Rogers

 

 

Eliot wanted to punch something.

Granted, this was not an unusual occurrence for Eliot Spencer. The reasons behind today’s violent inclinations, however, were.

Eliot settled for pinching the bridge of his nose. It was a gesture they had grown fond of seeing on the faces of moneymongers and corporate hounds over the years; the gesture of a man who knew, through and through, that he was fucked.

“What do you mean, you don’t have it?” he asked, his eyes squeezed shut.

“I mean,” Otis said, “it’s recalled. They’re not makin’ it anymore.”

On some level, Eliot had known. There were certain things he liked to keep tabs on at all times, for personal reasons, so when he’d gotten word of some government agencies poking around the area a couple of weeks ago he’d prepared for the worst.

“And the lab?”

“Hey, I’m just the fence, Spencer,” Otis said, sounding nervous. Eliot tended to do that to people. “But I…heard it was shut down last week.”

Eliot sighed. “That's great, man.” Definitely fucked.

“Look, I’m sorry,” said Otis. “I know those weren’t ordinary drugs. You lose the good stuff and I lose my clients. It blows.” He huffed. “Fucking military spending.”

Odds were the military found that place purely by accident, but Eliot didn’t bother correcting him. He thanked Otis and hung up, phone cradled loosely in his hand as he mulled things over with a scowl pulling down his brow.

The Inhibitors were gone. Not the end of the world, mind you, but certainly a royal pain in his ass. Things would have to change. Eliot stared at the calendar on his wall, at the little circle marked on it a week from today, and wondered where he should go from here.

As if on cue, his phone buzzed with a text from Alec Hardison.

 

 

 

Alec looked as if he had swallowed an entire bag of lemons when Eliot walked into the pub. It was a strange look on him, and Eliot would have been amused had he been the one to put it there. Parker was sitting cross-legged on the couch picking at the ends of her fuzzy scarf, her face neutral. She frowned, though, when Alec beelined for a bag of spicy chips and proceeded to pour an obscene amount of them into a bowl.

Eliot’s nose crinkled. Alec was more of a sweets kind of guy, only keeping the savory snacks on hand when he’d either forgotten to do the food shopping or was supremely stressed. Judging from his Lemon Face, Eliot didn't have to guess which one it was.

“I received a distress call,” Alec said, once everyone was seated. Immediately, Eliot’s eyes narrowed. _Distress call_ differed from _client_ in that it implied somebody they already knew. Which was never good.  

“One of ours?” asked Parker, thinking the same thing.

Alec’s lips thinned. “Not exactly.” He pressed a button on his remote and a picture of an unmistakably modern building filled the screen.

Now it was Parker’s turn to grimace. “Really?” she said. “Glass elevators? Can we take them out just for those?”

“If only. Here we have Visage Organics, product company in Seattle led by Daniel Corra,” Alec explained, jabbing a thumb at the architectural nightmare behind him. “Pretty high up on the Black Book. They’ve got a neat little Ponzi thing goin’, and man," he shook his head, "you don’t even _wanna_ know what they put in their stuff.”

“I heard about this,” Parker remarked. “Their products cause all sorts of minor health problems for their customers, and then the company profits from the medical expenses.”

Alec nodded. “Now, Corra’s been on our list for a while, but we haven’t had the resources yet to go after him or his company.”

“Somebody try to take them out?” Eliot asked, nose wrinkling again. The seasoning from Alec’s chips, along with Parker’s fuzzy scarf, were starting to make his nose itch. Dimly, he could hear both their hearts beating. Alec’s shirt kept scraping against a Band-Aid on his arm. Parker was on her period. It always got like this the days leading up to the full moon. And, while heightened senses could be useful, they weren’t always a walk in the park.

“About an hour ago I got an encrypted e-mail,” Alec told them as he connected his desktop to the main screen. He held up a finger. “Lots of people have my public e-mail address—y’know, for purchases and stuff, but this one was sent to my _private_ address.”

Parker re-crossed her legs. “Who was it from?”

Alec, looking less than pleased, said, “I managed to decode the message and trace the IP. And get this; it was from a cell that had about six levels of protection piggy-backing on it. Including _this_ variant of _my_ software—“he ran a stream of coding, his grimace growing more pronounced—“which belongs to only one other person.”

Another picture filled the screen.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Eliot grumbled. Suddenly Alec's disdain made a lot more sense. Parker didn't say anything, but squinted balefully into the folds of her scarf.

“Colin Mason finally messed with the wrong people,” Alec announced, staring at the blown up picture of Chaos on the wall. “Which normally would make me very, _very_ happy, but…”

“Daniel Corra is even worse,” Parker finished. “Which means we have to save him.”

“Unfortunately,” said Alec.

“So we’re the ones to have to clean up his mess,” said Eliot. He shook his head. “Can’t one of our other branches take care of it?”

“If Mason is in enough trouble to ask Hardison for help, then he probably thinks only we can do it,” Parker ratiocinated.

Eliot sighed, because she was right. The little asshole probably bit off more than he could chew, which wasn’t exactly unlike him. “Did Mason go in with a team?” he asked Alec.

“Yeah,” Alec replied. He switched the image on the screen to the e-mail he received, to their relief, because Mason’s face was something none of them cared to stare at for too long. “He didn’t provide specifics, but I hacked into Visage Organics’ servers and found their reports from this last week. Mason doesn’t have the best judgment when it comes to people—“

Parker interrupted with a snort.

“—so he went in with a slipshod team.” Alec grinned in schadenfreude. “Plus, y’know, glass elevators. I mean, _look_ at these guys. A combination of lots of talent, little experience, and bumping egos,” he finished, rolling his eyes. “It’s sad, really. He even recruited—“

He was interrupted again, this time with an ill-timed sneeze from Eliot. Eliot motioned with his eyebrows for Alec to go on, giving a sharp sniff and casting his eyes to the side because it was never just one sneeze with him, this close to the moon.

“He recruited _Spudnick._ Dude’s crazier than Parker,” Alec continued, as if nothing had happened.

Parker nodded, smiling fondly. “Crazier and stupider. I heard once he tried to open a Glen Reader with a—“

A second sneeze from Eliot, followed by a harsh third. In response, Parker curled over the side arm of the couch to reach into her coat pocket (since Parker generally tossed anything she wasn't using or wearing on the floor or hung it in various places, her fall coat was draped over the lamp). She pulled out a small travel packet of Kleenex, which she handed to Eliot. Eliot glared at the packet, but after realizing he couldn't win a staring contest with an inanimate object, conceded and snatched the packet from Parker.

Alec finished the rest of the briefing, which was beginning to sound more and more like a shit show with every word. Eliot sneezed intermittently throughout the whole thing because fuck heightened senses and fuck Alec’s spicy chips and whatever the fuck was in Parker’s scarf.

After Eliot let loose with a particularly violent sneeze, Alec gave him a once-over and asked softly, “You okay, man?”

Eliot shrugged. “Comin' down with something,” he lied. “Gonna try to sleep it off.”

“I’ll come by with more tissues later, if you want,” Parker offered. She knew Eliot liked his space when he wasn’t feeling well, but she didn’t seem unduly concerned with the thought of him sick. Eliot had been known to fight through worse, after all.

Eliot shook his head and muttered something about a Thing he had to go do (which in reality amounted to quietly freaking out in his room and possibly stress baking, but that was his prerogative). At least he sounded nasal enough for it to be credible.

Parker tossed him another Kleenex packet. Eliot assumed she carried them around for Alec, even though it was November and well past allergy season. He found himself glad she did, though, because right now his sinuses were kind of on fire.

It wasn't uncommon for something to set Eliot off from time to time. Which actually turned out to be at a more or less specific time. The random, unexplainable sneezing fits, meat cravings, and headaches seemed to occur only during certain times of the month. For their part, the others never commented on it.

Thankfully they hadn’t put two and two together. But really, Eliot thought, who would?

 

 

 

Eliot paced his bedroom, silently fuming over his little sneezing jag during the briefing. Even though it wasn’t really that, nor the other sensitivities that came pre-transformation. Sometimes they proved handy, like when he could smell cocaine powder in a truck or hear a weapon brushing against the inside of a jacket (all of which he labeled as "very distinctive," because people usually chalked that up to experience). Not to say they didn’t annoy the hell out of him sometimes. Dimly, Eliot could hear the tenant downstairs flushing a toilet. A mother on the street outside scheduling with her babysitter. Smell the Halal stand on the corner. He felt the beginning throbs of a headache and pulled out a little package of earplugs from his top drawer.

This whole thing—it wasn’t contagious, just annoying. _And_ it embodied practically every horror and sci-fi cliché there was. Seriously. There was a reason he never told people. What would he say? Dude joins army, army part of some secret government agency that experiments on soldiers, bada boom, bada bing?

Plus, for all the hype, lycanthropy wasn’t as dramatic or romantic as YA novels made it out to be. In real life, the transformations could be controlled or eliminated altogether with the proper medication. Inhibitors.

…which Eliot no longer had.

Twisting the little pieces of foam deep into his ears, Eliot thought about the Mason retrieval. It wasn’t that he wasn’t up for the job. But without the pills, he would not be able to prevent the change, and changing during a job was less than ideal for several reasons.

He didn’t think Parker would have a problem with it, but Alec would definitely flip twelve kinds of technicolor shit if he saw Eliot turn into something out of _Game of Thrones_ gone wrong. Eliot had something nice here, with Leverage, and a part of him was scared to think that they might not treat him the same, if they found out.

He remembered scolding Sophie what seemed like eons ago and his stomach clenched uncomfortably. _You don’t con your own team._ But, like he'd also told Sophie at a different point in time, he could take the punishment. It's what he did. _  
_

Only this time, he wasn't so sure he wanted to.

After a minute Eliot sighed roughly, pushed back his hair, and took the earplugs out.

Time to call in reinforcements.

Tracking down Quinn these days had evolved from hearsay and city-hopping to a simple phone call (thanks to Alec and his utter disregard for privacy).

“The little twerp from the Bellington Dam,” Quinn recalled, when Eliot explained the retrieval. “And you want me to help you rescue him."

"You in?" asked Eliot.

Quinn sighed over the line. "I'll admit it was fun last time, but the thing is, I'm not in the habit of working with a team," he said. "Can’t you call somebody else for this? Mikel?”

Eliot grit his teeth. “She’s…busy.”

“Ah yes, I heard. Romania, was it?”

“Plus she’d tear Mason’s head off within five minutes,” said Eliot, smiling grimly. “She doesn’t have your restraint.”

“Lucky me,” Quinn muttered. “But seriously, Eliot. Why are you calling me?”

Eliot swallowed before he spoke again. “Croatia.”

Quinn was silent on the other end. There were only a handful of hitters, most of them ex-Black Ops, who knew about the project. Eliot hadn’t been happy when he found out that Quinn knew, but there was little he could do about it and it wasn't like Quinn really had anybody to _tell._

“They’ve…they’ve stopped making treatments.”

“Yes, well that tends to happen when you’re not even supposed to exist in the first place,” Quinn said, his normal glib somewhat subdued. “Full moon’s next week. You need me to cover your team.” It wasn’t a question.

“You’ll get the usual six figures, plus,” Eliot’s lip twitched in annoyance, “I’ll owe you a favor.”

“This is two you owe me now,” remarked Quinn, sounding amused. “Can I have some fun with Mason, while I’m at it?”

Eliot huffed a laugh. “Fine by me, as long as you don’t kill ‘im.”

“You’re lucky I have so much _restraint,”_ said Quinn, sighing again.

Eliot rubbed the corner of his eye as his temples gave another throb. “Quinn,” he said, softly. “Keep them out of trouble for me, or I don’t need to tell you what’s gonna happen.”

Now it was Quinn’s turn to laugh. “You may be the werewolf, Eliot, but I’ve seen who you work with and to be honest you’re the _least_ frightening person on that team.”

Eliot wasn’t one to argue a valid point, so he just shut up and gave Quinn the rest of the information so he could get off the phone and pop an Advil.

 

 

 

Alec told himself he was used to people sneaking up on him by now, with Parker and all, but when they came downstairs to the pub the next morning and saw Mr. Quinn sitting nonchalantly on one of the bar seats he almost threw his tablet at the nearest window.

“Uh,” he said, because he hadn’t quite gotten past _premature heart attack_ to forming words yet. Fortunately, Parker was a little quicker than him.

“Did Eliot call you?” she asked, in lieu of hello. Parker didn’t really do hellos.

“Parker, Hardison. A pleasure to see you again,” Quinn greeted, inclining his head. “And yes, Eliot called me.”

“Where is he?”

“Home,” Quinn said. “He’s sick.”

 _“Sick?”_ Alec echoed in disbelief.

“That wouldn’t stop Eliot,” Parker said. Almost imperceptibly, her fingers disappeared behind her back. “Maybe we should check on him.”

“It’s pretty bad,” replied Quinn, giving his most convincing smile. He could see no obvious bulge in Parker’s clothing, which ruled out her carrying a gun. A Taser, he guessed.

 “We—we just thought he had the sniffles, or somethin’,” Alec said slowly, eyes narrowed at Quinn.

Quinn traced the tattoo on his left forearm, undaunted. Hardison had a rather expressive face, he noticed. Eliot did too, but in a different way that simply came across as angry to other people. Parker was a lot harder to read, if you didn’t know her. Quinn had only spent a short time with Parker, but he knew enough to check his pockets every 17.5 seconds. And to keep one eye on the hand behind her back.

“Well he’s obviously ill enough that he thought he’d compromise the team,” Quinn told them. He arched an eyebrow. “Or did you not notice the fever he was running yesterday?”

Parker gave him a long, blank look before turning away and drifting towards the couch. “Okay, so you’re filling in,” she said. “Do you know the job?”

Quinn’s smile took on a distinctly pinched look. “Regrettably.”

Alec exchanged a final glance with Parker before shaking his head with a small grin. “Welcome to the team, man,” he said.

 

 

 

The next day found them at the company’s front doors, waiting for the head saleswoman of Visage Organics. They were posing as offshore clients simply because Quinn, as it turned out, could do a spot-on Irish accent and Alec was all too eager to add that to his grifting repertoire (Alec had found, through failed imitations of Sophie Devereaux, that Irish was a; Not London and b; needed work).

Quinn was also the one with fake acne, to his chagrin, because Parker did wonders with makeup when she wasn’t actually _doing_ makeup. He observed Hardison, picking at a hangnail from over by the receptionist’s desk and doing a little too good a job of staring into space.

“Something wrong?”

Alec blinked and shook his head. “Nah, just thinkin’ about Eliot,” he said.

“He’ll be okay,” said Parker, in their comms. “I gave him my tissues.”

“Sometimes Eliot does that,” Alec explained to Quinn—to both of them, really. “Seems perfectly fine, then goes off to keel over in a corner somewhere. Guy’s real good at it, too.”

Quinn couldn’t read the look on Hardison’s face, so he just said, “I’m sure he’s alright,” and left it at that. He wasn't interested or suicidal enough to pry into their team dynamics right now.

“Course he is, bruh. Now _Mason,_ on the other hand—“Alec clenched a fist, shaking his head—“if we get him out of this alive I swear I’m gonna kill him myself.”

Before Alec could say anything more the mark spotted Quinn and rushed over in a jangle of very expensive bracelets and earrings.

“Young man, you _must_ tell me what you do with your skin!” she exclaimed. “You have a wonderful tone, but you could use some exfoliating. Come dear, I know the perfect scrub you should be using.”

“Not if I get to Mason first,” Quinn muttered into his comms, as he was being led away.

 

 

 

Sometimes the bad guys were smart, too.

The main reason Chaos had fallen short was because Visage Organics displayed a purposely public internet footprint of their building, staff, and company workings that disguised the entirely hard-copy layout of their security detail. Naturally, Quinn had taken one look at the security feed and had spotted it immediately.

“Oh, our little friend was so fucked,” he declared. “If Visage Organics is keeping their security secret it probably means private militia or mercs for hire.” Which was a lot of work and money for a corporation that produced cosmetics, but hey, Quinn thought. Sometimes beauty kills.

“Fan- _tas_ tic,” drawled Alec, sarcastic. Paper files meant grifting, not hacking, which had him irritable to show for it.

Parker tapped her chin. “If they’re that good, why would they keep Mason alive this long?”

“Hackers are _irritatingly_ good at talking their way out of things,” replied Alec, making a face. “Even Mason. He’s probably convinced them all he's more useful alive to buy himself more time.”

"And how much time is that, exactly?" Quinn asked.

"Well," Alec said, "let's use some mathematics, shall we. If _t_ equals the number of hours since capture, multiplied by _n_ people who are holding him, and then subtract _a_ for Mason's level of annoyingness, then _x_ equals..."

"Not a lot of time," concluded Quinn.

"Not a lot of time," Parker agreed.

 

 

 

Later, Parker was flipping through one of the Visage Organics files Alec had stolen, her eyes creased in thought. “We need a way to draw Corra out,” she said. “Get him to make a move of some kind.”

Which was a lot harder than it sounded. Daniel Corra was unflappable, as most CEOs who sold their souls to the Black Lagoon generally were.

Which is why they decided, in the end, to kill Cathy Corra.

(And by “kill,” they meant have Alec take his sister out for a nice evening, splash copious amounts of red food dye over the sheets while she was sleeping, take some pics, and send them to Visage Organics.)

“Remind me why I’m not doing this?” asked Quinn. Hardison had charm, don’t get him wrong, but he’d found in his line of work that hitters often made oddly good wooers. Something in the brain made people equate _dangerous_ with _sexy._

“You’re like Eliot,” Alec argued. Quinn raised an eyebrow.

“I mean,” said Alec, waving his hand up and down the expanse that was Quinn, “you’re a little _too_ charming. I was browsing Cat’s Tumblr page and I get the feeling she’s into something a little more _nerdy,_ you get what I’m sayin,’ bruh?”

“Like CGI Yoda,” Parker said, from the loft floor above.

Quinn put his face in his hands.

 

 

 

Eliot knew it was only a matter of time before Parker and Hardison checked up on him. The realization hit him as he was baking his second honey crunch and pecan pie and before he started on the brisket and spinach enchiladas, enough to make him pause in his mixing.

They knew he needed what Parker liked to call Man Space, but it had been three days and Alec tended to break into covert intelligence databases when he was restless.

Sure enough, the LED light on his phone was blinking. Eliot hadn’t heard it buzz earlier (desserts could be very occupying), so he was a little surprised to see a string of texts dating back to this morning with variants of _you dead?_ And, _if so, Parker wants to know if she can have your katana?_

Eliot ignored the texts and spread a thin honey glaze on the pie, giving a wince when his phone started ringing because the sound seemed to be drilling a hole right into the soft part behind his eyeballs.

Eventually, the phone stopped ringing. Eliot sighed and finished the glaze. 

A moment later, his laptop started beeping. Which was interesting, since Eliot hadn’t turned the damn thing on all week and even if he had he was pretty sure normal, functioning laptops weren't supposed to make that kind of sound. Eliot found when he ignored those guys for too long his electrical appliances would start malfunctioning, or he’d find mysterious objects placed around his apartment in odd or unlikely places (the last time Eliot found a pair of handcuffs in his shower he hadn’t spoken to Parker for a day).

Eliot knew from experience they weren’t likely to stop until he gave some indication that he was still alive, so, gritting his teeth, he finally opened his phone. Naturally, the messages were all from Alec. Parker didn’t text.

The most recent one read _: U need anything?_

 _It’s fine, don’t come over,_ Eliot texted back.

Come to think of it, Eliot realized as he slid the pie into the oven, he never really answered Alec’s question.

 

 

 

After another day (in which Colin Mason could very well be dead—a thought which managed to instill both annoyance _and_ guilt because screw Nathan Ford for giving them all a conscience), Quinn was finally starting to understand Eliot a little better.

Hardison and Parker were two personalities he never expected Eliot (or any hired gun, for that matter) to associate with. It wasn't exactly love-hate. It was more like...respect-exasperation. They were all geniuses, but half of the time Quinn didn’t get them and the other half he wanted to smack them to Sunday and back.

He knew they were dating. But he started to see after a while that within that they had a rhythm; the comfortable ebb and flow of partners who had been working together for years. Quinn was nobody’s third wheel, and they trusted him enough, but there were subtle hints—in the ways they piggy-backed off the other's ideas, in their open body language and the looks shared—that suggested deep intimacy with each other. Quinn didn’t need a grifter’s eye to see that.

"You're more polite than Eliot," Parker pointed out one afternoon, after Quinn explained for the third time that no, he did not want Alec to turn his cell phone into a metal detector. "Usually Eliot just shouts a lot until we do stuff."

To anyone normal that would have been a complaint, but Quinn didn't miss the fondness lining Parker's face as she said it.

And okay, maybe now he was just _a little_ interested in their team dynamics.

He and Parker were currently spending what he called surveillance and she called Criminal Bonding Time at a café while Alec wined and dined Cathy Corra. Quinn also got after a few days that Parker said roughly a third of what was actually going on in her head. Which was fine by him. He didn’t mind the silence.

Hardison and Corra were currently debating female representation in Marvel versus DC, extensively. Eighty percent gibberish to Quinn, and about sixty percent to Parker, judging from how much of the Sunday crossword she had already completed at the table.

“Alec sounds like he’s having fun,” Quinn remarked, glancing at his watch.

At this, Parker looked up from the crossword she was doing, her expression serious. “No, he’s not,” she said.

Quinn narrowed his eyes.

“He’s worried,” Parker elaborated. In that moment, she said it with such finality that Quinn believed it.

“Mason’s going to be fine,” Quinn reassured her. “He’s like a cockroach. They never die.”

Parker shook her head. “No, not Mason,” she said. “Eliot.”

Taking a sip of his latte, because he was one of those horrible people who drank caffeine after nine, Quinn said, “Eliot is one of the strongest people I know. He’ll be up and about in no time.”

They lapsed into silence for a bit after that, playing at normal people out for a drink rather than two criminals in a café about to commit a faux homicide.

 _“…And girl, as bitchy as Amanda Waller is she knows how to_ work _the system and that’s what I’m talkin’ about when it comes to…”_

Alec sure was talking a lot. At first Quinn had thought the wired, rambling geek-out was part of the con, but now he was starting to think Parker was right.

“Is he usually this weird?” Quinn asked her. His latte was mostly cold now, but he decided to finish it anyway because the damn thing had cost him four bucks.

“We’re all weird,” Parker replied. She went back to her crossword but continued speaking. “Hardison’s weird because he battles dragons and wizards with glowy sticks on the internet. I’m weird because I eat cereal without milk. And I thought Eliot was weird for being a werewolf at first but he’s actually pretty normal, compared to us.”

Quinn choked on his latte.

 _“What?”_ he managed, between coughs. Real smooth, Quinn.

Parker looked up. “Oh,” she frowned. “I thought you knew. That’s why Eliot called you.”

“I—“Quinn cleared his throat, trying to regain some of his composure. “Yes I knew, but—“

Parker was peering at him closely now. “So we’re all on the same page, then,” she said.

Quinn leaned back in his chair, gave a sigh, and tried not to think about how fucked he was. “I don’t think Eliot knows that you know,” he said, slowly.

Shaking her head, Parker replied, “Eliot will tell us when he’s ready. I get…” she trailed off and stared out the window, at the foggy street lamp on the corner. “I get that people need time to say what they feel.”

“It’s been what, six years since you guys teamed up?” Quinn recalled.

“Sometimes they need a lot of time,” Parker said, shrugging. “Eliot’s kind of sensitive.”

It was no foible of his, and certainly not the best trait for a hitter, Quinn thought to himself. But for someone who was part of a team…maybe it was not such a bad thing after all.

“He’s been acting weird this week, so Hardison and I gave him space,” Parker told him. “Is there a problem with his transformation?”

“I think Eliot should be the one to tell you that, Parker,” said Quinn.

Parker’s expression turned hard. “But he’s not here,” she said, the lines of her mouth drawing down. “Eliot wouldn’t back out of a job unless something was wrong.”

Quinn was not quite sure what to say to that.

It was clear that Alec was listening in over the comms, because his discussion with Cathy Corra was taking a rather interesting turn.

 _“…'s why I can’t pick Team Cap or Team Iron Man. And why does everybody think miscommunication is some amazing novelty plot device, anyway?  It's old, and I for one do not appreciate it. The whole damn thing could have been avoided by the dudes just communicating like normal people instead of keepin' it all inside. Now, the last time somebody didn’t tell_ me _something,_ I _got thrown in a swimming pool,”_ Alec was saying, which made Corra giggle.

Parker’s eyes were boring holes into Quinn’s like drills, and something about a thief staring at him made Quinn feel oddly like a safe instead of a man. Parker waited.

 _“Not my OTP, but I mean, it’s obvious they care about each other,”_ Alec said.

Quinn sighed again. Confidentiality was pretty much thrown out the window at this point, so what the hell.

“Okay,” he said.

Dear god, Eliot was going to _flense_ him.

 

 

 

“I have a bad feeling,” Eliot said two days later, over the phone.

“What is that, wolf instinct? Is that why you called?” Quinn tried for a grin, but found it lacking. Some things just weren’t funny, when you thought about them too much.

“No, it’s instinct instinct,” Eliot replied. His glare was practically a living thing that Quinn could see. “Everything alright?”

“Tip-top,” said Quinn, because he'd been speaking in an Irish accent for half a week and his sense of humor was perhaps even cornier than Eliot's. “Job’s almost done, and boy am I looking forward to not wearing fake pimples. Hello to you too, by the way.”

Eliot sounded suspicious. “What’s up, Quinn?”

“Nothing,” Quinn said, eyebrows raised.

“Your voice sounds…funny.”

“Does it?” Quinn grinned, a little more successful this time. “I think it’s adorable that you’re concerned.” He pursed his lips and paused, sobering. “Look, nothing’s wrong with the job. We’re finishing up and getting Mason tonight.”

Eliot seemed satisfied for the time being. “Just be careful, alright?” he said, after a minute.

“Always am, Eliot.”

 

 

 

Parker’s planning was impeccable. But therein lay the problem with impeccable planning; it was too good. That was when things unhinged, tended to get slippery. Especially with glass elevators.

It had been Mason's fault. Well, technically this entire operation had been Mason's fault, but Mason had insisted on getting back his damn thumb drive before they left. "Important information you wouldn't understand," he claimed, like Quinn hadn't gone to Quantico when he was seventeen. Mason was one of those people who seemed to attract the scut of Murphy's Law like a nighttime lamp attracted moths (or maybe it was just bad karma, Quinn thought), so of course they had been caught. Quinn barely managed to get the idiot out alive.

“Go,” he told Mason. “Hardison will contact you when we’re done. And stop _touching_ it, for god’s sake—“he smacked Mason’s hand away. Hackers didn’t usually make habits of getting their arms sliced open, and makeshift bandages were apparently fascinating and sensory relieving.

On the plus side, Mason was too terrified to be smug about anything this time around.

Quinn grimaced and tried not to put pressure on his broken leg. Like Eliot, he had field medical training and all it had taken was one loud snap of his tibia to realize that he was out of the game. Well. He certainly wouldn't be winning any Oscars for that shining moment. They were good enough that this sort of thing _wasn't_ supposed to happen, but as it did happen the aleatory gods of chance had shat their chaotic shit everywhere with this one. And now, maybe people were going to die.

Quinn looked at his watch, and at the glare of the sinking sun against the building wall he was currently slumped against. Four-fifteen. Still time to call Eliot. Dammit, he hated getting blood on his phone.

“Remember when you told me to be careful?”

Eliot’s voice was deadly quiet on the other line, like he had been expecting this. “Speak.”

So Quinn grit his teeth and explained how Corra had freaked when he thought his sister had been murdered, how he had called in his highly trained paramilitary mercs, how they had Parker and Hardison. Upon hearing that last bit Eliot growled like no person with a normal voice box should ever be able to growl. Hearing him, Quinn thought of revising his earlier comment about Eliot not being the scariest one on the team.

“I’m comin',” said Eliot.

“That’s not the best idea,” Quinn objected, glancing again at the bleeding tangerine horizon. “The moon?”

“My team’s in trouble,” Eliot growled. “That’s my responsibility. They might not look at me the same after tonight, but—“

 _“Eliot,”_ Quinn pressed. The pain helped. And miraculously, Eliot shut up.

 “Eliot.” Quinn blew out a breath, mostly from the fact that his bone was poking out of his leg than awkwardness. “They know.”

“They…” There was a pause, in which Quinn could hear Eliot swallow.

He added, “I think they’ve known for a while.”

“And we’re gonna have words about that later,” Eliot told him. “But for now give me the location. If I leave now I can make it there in a few hours.”

The sudden thought of an oversized wolf in a Henley driving Eliot’s gray Chevy made Quinn bite the inside of his cheek against a semi-hysterical chuckle. Oh god, Eliot was most certainly going to kill him after this.

“Look, if I find something to splint my leg with I can go back and get them,” he said, hasty. “They’re not exactly damsels in distress, so I would probably only need to take out—“

“No,” Eliot said immediately.

“Are you sure?” asked Quinn. “I recognized the guys who have them. Mercenaries. Ex-Serbian-American paramilitary.”

“They’re mine,” Eliot said, his voice barely a whisper.   

Now _that_ was the voice of Eliot Spencer. Combined with whatever was coursing through his blood, pulled by the lunar tides past the far sides of humanity. Quinn suppressed a shiver.

Yeah, he was definitely taking back what he said. Quinn was no bleeding heart, but he felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the poor sods who had Parker and Hardison.

 

 

 

At seven o’ clock, Alec stopped smiling.

Eliot had once told him that he and Parker were like pearls. Beautiful, yes, but formed by constant irritation. Parker and Alec's ability to drive people up the wall was just as impressive as any of their other skills. So impressive, in fact, that today it had earned Alec a punch to the solar plexus, a dislocated shoulder, and cause to separate them.

Of course, he catalogued the measly 2011 alarm panel and eight cams on the way to the room. For good measure. It didn't help much.

All things considered, Alec was pretty damn proud that he was able to play it cool. He’d been physically hurt before on the job: beaten up by college frat boys, thrown off of various buildings and rooftops, bruised by ex-insurance agent agents, and oh, let’s not forget _buried alive_ —but never like this.

They were too good for that. Only sometimes, being too good turned out to be an issue when you factored the constants of plans against the variables of people. Things hadn’t gone this wrong for them since the White Rabbit, and even that had turned out somewhat okay.

He would have reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose (the gesture of all men fucked, to some degree), had his shoulder not been throbbing the Macarena.

Corra was smart but Alec was smarter, so he managed to stall like a car in the dead of winter. He smiled through the interrogation. He smiled through a kick to the groin (which was a fuckton hard to do, just sayin’). He smiled as he watched Quinn get his ass handed to him on the security cams. He even smiled through Corra’s threats to do “various things” to Parker.

Then at seven, the screaming began. And it wasn’t Parker, thank the orcs. Several high pitched shrieks that only men terrified out of their minds could muster rang up from the ground floor, and sweet Jesus fuck. Alec was at least three floors up, and he could _still hear them._ _  
_

But see, that was a problem. For all his skill even Quinn couldn’t cross off a dozen military dudes with a good leg, let alone a broken one. Alec remembered that crunch. It was a very distinctive crunch.

So somebody else had to be taking out those guys. Definitely not Mason, who was too smart to have come back, and hardly Parker, who preferred to do things quick and quiet.

Quinn must have called Eliot, Alec concluded. Only Eliot could generate that amount of screaming. But that couldn’t be right.

Because tonight was…

The last of Alec’s grin fizzled and died. He relocated his shoulder with an agonizing pop (something Eliot had taught him.) Then he scrambled out of his chair, picked the lock to the door with the safety pin tucked into his belt (always be prepared, that was Parker’s first rule of thumb), and ran out into the hallway. There was nobody guarding his door.

Or Parker’s, for that matter. She barreled into him as Alec was running down the stairwell. There was a scrape along one cheek and her right eye was blackening. Parker met Alec’s wide, dark eyes as, from somewhere on the lower level, they heard a howl.

“Eliot,” she breathed, grabbing his hand. “Come on.”

Alec’s first thought when they burst through the double doors was that the few scant pictures he’d seen on the project didn’t quite do Eliot justice.

For a second, he didn't really know _what_ he was seeing. It was as if someone had taken a wolf, blown it up to roughly the size of a pony, and given it vaguely human features. It ( _he,_ Alec reminded himself) was mostly wolf, but there was something very man-like in the way he moved. Alec shivered and wondered if there was an uncanny valley factor for animals because the few men that were still standing looked like they had most definitely pissed themselves.

His second thought was _woah._

The place was Pollack in red. He’d never been so thankful for video games and the Russian mob and Eliot himself, all of which had desensitized him to gore and blood and the like. Men lay sprawled about the floor like used tissues, some moving, some not. Alec glanced over at Parker. She was looking at Eliot with a combination of fascination and sadness. Alec probably wore something similar on his own face.

Third, he thought, was that these people made Eliot do this, and for that they deserved whatever was coming to them. It was a surprisingly malicious thought, but then again this was Eliot, their family.

Alec had researched the project years ago, because he was trained in algorithms; to spot patterns in programming, and yeah, he’d noticed something off with Eliot pretty much from the get-go. Sure, you don’t con your own team (to borrow Eliot's words), but in a world where privacy was Alec’s own personal jungle gym, knowing couldn’t hurt. Especially when Eliot showed up as what Alec's mind dubbed the "piss" _aller_ because French was funny like that. Only it wasn't now.

The last guy fell with a thud that was a little too wet for Alec’s liking, and Eliot was left crouching in the bright fluorescent lights. Although more than a little unsettling, there was something vaguely beautiful in his design. Alec couldn't put his finger on what exactly, at first. He bit his lip, reminding himself that the design was not _supposed_ to be beautiful. He'd read the redacted file.

No; what made it beautiful was that even as a wolf, there was still a sense of _Eliot_ there. 

“Eliot,” Parker said again, soft, taking a step forward. Eliot seemed to notice them for the first time and froze. He bared his teeth and let out a deep, throaty growl.

Alec wasn’t exactly worried that Eliot would take Parker’s head off (he’d also read about the partial consciousness bit), but all the same he held out a hand to stop her.

“Babe,” he said, shaking his head. Alec turned back towards Eliot, noticing how Eliot had angled his head so his eyes weren’t visible. Something in Alec’s chest clenched, because he didn't need to be staring at a human to recognize that look. 

It was shame.

“Eliot, man,” Alec began, holding out his hands, not even knowing if Eliot could understand them. “Look, I know we—“

Eliot interrupted with another growl, hackles raising slightly, and before Alec could say any more he fled.

Alec and Parker stood alone in his wake, amongst a carpet a fallen men. Somewhere, they could hear the steady _plip, plip_ of someone bleeding freely onto the tiled floor.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Alec, after a moment that felt like hours.

“Wait,” said Parker, looking at the bodies with a frown.

 

 

 

Wrapping up the Corra case felt less like a job well done and more like cleaning up flotsam from a shipwreck. Nevertheless, Visage Organics was publicly shamed and all of their victims soon received mysterious checks in the mail.

Back at the pub, Parker had a bag of frozen edamame pressed against her black eye and Alec had opened a jumbo bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos out on the table. Alec, Quinn noticed, was chewing on them idly without really realizing he was doing so until Parker moved the bag out of reach.

In a rare moment of trust Quinn actually accepted the pain meds Alec had gotten him (retrieval specialists around the world were flipping like pancakes in their graves, he was sure), after Alec almost tore Mason a new one on his behalf. Almost. Quinn had never seen anyone look so relieved to be injured before.

Hardison and Parker both looked _itchy,_ bothered by something other than Mason’s neckbeard, and Quinn had a sneaking suspicion it began with an “e” and ended with a “t.” And maybe the pain meds were getting to him, but since his legs couldn’t run his mouth decided to make up for the fact.

“You guys look pissed,” he noted. Not his most graceful moment, but give the guy with a broken leg a break. Figuratively, of course.

Alec opened his mouth to say something, only nothing came out (for once). He closed it again.

“It’s a lot of collateral damage,” Parker supplied. She took the bag of frozen edamame away from her face and wrinkled her nose. “Usually our jobs aren’t so messy.”

“Look,” said Quinn. “How long are we going to ignore the giant elephant in the room?”

“What elephant?” Parker asked at the same time Alec said, “I don’t know man, we’re pretty good at hiding from stuff,” trying for a joke and falling slightly short.

Parker frowned for another beat before her face smoothed out in understanding. “Oh,” she said. “You mean Eliot.”

“Hey, _I_ knew about him too,” Quinn said lazily, and no he was not slurring his words, thank you very much.

“Yeah, ‘cause we all thought Eliot called you in to discuss hair care,” Alec quipped, raising his eyebrows at Quinn’s artfully disheveled ponytail.

Hardison’s face, expressive as always, showed concern, guilt. Quinn saw that they were frustrated, but not with him. Sometimes it was easy to sit across from two of the most dangerous people in the world and forget just how _young_ Parker and Hardison were.

“You two have known about Eliot’s condition for like," Quinn twirled his hand in the air, "six years—“

“Five and a half,” Alec muttered. “If y’all wanna get technical.”

Quinn rolled his eyes. _“Five and a half_ years,” he continued. "Frankly, for some of the smartest people in the northern hemisphere I am astounded that neither one of you—“

Parker cleared her throat and slipped a hand behind her back.

“You guys should have a heart-to-heart,” Quinn finished.

Parker's hand returned to her lap, and she shook her head. “Eliot needs space right now,” she said.

“No, he doesn’t,” Quinn argued. Alec looked up in surprise.

“I know you guys know Eliot,” Quinn said, rubbing at his tattoo like he did when he had to discuss things that weren’t business, like _feelings,_ because somewhere along the line he may have become invested in the team after all, “and sure, you bring out a...different version of him than the one I’ve heard about. But even so, Eliot's been carrying this around with him for a while, and if it were me I wouldn’t let this hang.”

Parker shared a look with Alec. In that moment her face was suddenly very open, very vulnerable. "Two days, then," she said. "After the moon wanes."

Somehow Quinn knew what she was saying without her actually saying it. _I don’t know what to say._

“Go to him,” he told her. “He’ll understand.”

“Man, I gave you a double dose of tramadol; you shouldn’t even be _talkin’_ right now, let alone gettin’ all Doctor Phil on our asses,” Alec exclaimed, in awe. “And how do you know that?”

Quinn smiled. “Call it instinct,” he said.

 

 

 

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that Parker started making house calls. And by house calls she meant Eliot, because she and Alec lived upstairs at the Brew Pub and no one really wanted to barge in on Nate and Sophie when they were, you know, exercising.

The first thing Parker witnessed was that there was food everywhere. Like, _everywhere._ Dishes and covered platters of things Parker couldn’t even _name_ decorated almost every available surface of the kitchen. The recycling bin was up to its ears in discarded plastic wrap boxes.

“Sheesh,” she said to herself, because she knew there was stress baking and then there was Stress Baking.

“Gimme a minute, Parker,” said Eliot, from somewhere in the closet pantry down the hall.

“How did you know it was me?”

Eliot appeared a moment later, wearing a button-down shirt with a small tear near the collar. He was holding a bag of onions in his hands. Parker thought he looked tired.

“I could, um, smell you,” Eliot said awkwardly, glancing down at the onions. He looked up again, frowning at Parker’s healing but evident black eye. “You alright? Where’s Hardison?”

“He likes to play Dungeons and Dragons when he’s anxious,” replied Parker. It wasn’t really an answer, but at the same time it was.

Eliot saw Parker eyeing the dishes laid along the counter and blew out a breath, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “You hungry?”

“Yeah, actually,” Parker said, smiling. She pointed. “What’s that one?”

Eliot seemed more at ease when he answered. “Knishes.” He held up the bag in his hands. “I’m fryin’ some onions to go with 'em.”

Parker grabbed a plate and helped herself to several of the knishes, ignoring Eliot when he told her she should heat them up because they tasted pretty good cold. For a while she simply ate and watched Eliot as he prepared the onions, the silence comfortable even if there was an elephant in the room, somewhere.

Finally, Eliot asked, “How long have you known?”

Parker swallowed the last of her knish and immediately speared another one on her fork. “Since pretty early on,” she replied. “After we first met Sterling, I think?”

Eliot’s hand tightened around his spatula. “That long?”

“It was Hardison,” said Parker. “Back then I wasn’t…I wasn’t really in a position to notice stuff about other people, but he saw you were acting weird, or something.”

Eliot was staring at her, his bottom lip doing that little quivering thing it did whenever someone had momentarily vexed him. “That’s it?”

Parker shrugged and licked her fingers. “You had a pattern. And, well, Hardison…may have found the file. Sometimes he’s bad about privacy.”

“Not that bad,” said Eliot, glaring. “You guys should have told me you knew.”

“We didn’t know if it was something you wanted _us_ to know,” Parker admitted. “It’s like how some people have icky medical stuff they don’t want anybody to find out about, like a wart or Lyme’s disease or hemorrhoids—“

“I get it, Parker,” Eliot said. He turned off the stove with a click and busied himself with finding a plate for the fried onions.

Parker’s eyes fell to the small hole in his shirt. “Does it hurt?” she asked him.

A small, sad smile graced Eliot’s lips. “A little,” he said.

Parker watched him, biting her lower lip. This was the part where Quinn told her she should say something. Alec was so much better at this than her.

Which was why she’d asked him to wait at the pub. This was something she needed to do.

“We always made sure there was meat in the fridge, and we’d keep the noise down, not wear cologne, that sort of thing,” she started.

Eliot set the onions on a plate to cool. “Yeah?” he said, not looking at her.

“I know they stopped making your medicine,” Parker continued. “And I also know you didn’t want us to see that, the other night.”

At this Eliot turned to face her, his arms crossed. The crease between his eyes betrayed both irritation and shame, both of which Parker now recognized. A few years ago, she wouldn’t have.

“No, I didn’t,” Eliot said quietly.

Parker took a deep breath in. “Sometimes I would be afraid, when we were first working together, that if you guys saw me— _really_ saw me—you wouldn’t like it,” she told him, in one big exhale. “I didn’t expect to like working with you guys. So I was worried you would leave once you saw that something was wrong with me.”

Eliot drew closer and came to rest his elbows on the counter. “Parker,” he said, his voice soft. “To do what we do, it means something ain’t right with any of us, and hasn’t been for a long time. Only that don’t have to be a bad thing.”

“Except you think it is for you,” Parker noted.

Eliot paused. “I turn into a wolf every month,” he said, slowly, like it was his first time hearing those words out loud. “Inconvenient would be a bit of an understatement, darlin’.”

“We won’t,” Parker said, shaking her head. “Leave you, you know. You know that, right, Eliot?”

There was a smile on Eliot’s face, but there was also something in the blue of his eyes that told Parker he’d thought exactly that. Expressing for Parker was still a work in progress, so she didn’t quite know what to call the aching twinge in her chest when she saw that look on Eliot.

Instead, she reached over and took Eliot’s hand in her own. “Hardison and I want you to come over,” she told him. Eliot looked down at their hands, surprised, but he nodded.

“Okay,” he whispered.

“Bring the onions,” said Parker, grinning. 

 

 

 

Alec was doing that thing where he was pretending to act casual, badly. Someone who didn’t know him would think him relaxed, settled in the brown recliner with his shoes off and playing something with really bad sound effects on his laptop.

Judging by the graveyard of orange soda bottles around Alec, not so much. Eliot saw those, along with the unblinking, laser focus in which Alec killed what looked like yetis on the screen, and softened.

“Eliot brought dinner,” Parker announced, shrugging off her coat and gloves and throwing them haphazardly over the stair railing.

Alec perked up at the mention of food. “Nice,” he said, tearing his gaze away from the laptop. “What is it?”

“Knishes and fried onions,” Eliot supplied.

“Those like those little hot pocket things?”

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just refer to my dish as hot pockets,” said Eliot, eye twitching. He set the plate down on the countertop and disappeared into the front of the pub in search for utensils.

When he came back, Alec had put his laptop away. And not just closed it; he'd shut down and unplugged the thing. Eliot swallowed. There wasn't much in this world that could make Alec turn his laptop off. The last time it had happened was when his Nana had visited, and boy was _that_ a story for another time and place.

“So,” Eliot said, looking at them.

“So,” Alec said lightly, “werewolf, huh?”

Eliot made a face at the word. But he wasn’t one to shy away from things, or so he’d recently thought, so he looked at the floor and said, “Yeah."

They were waiting for him to talk, Eliot noticed. “Spoke with Quinn this afternoon," he started.

“We liked Quinn,” said Parker, nodding. “He’s a little like you, but taller. But we still like you better.” Coming from her, it was kind of sweet.

Eliot brushed some hair out of his eyes. “He had some interesting things to say, and it wasn’t 'cause of those hinky painkillers you gave him, Hardison—“

“How come he knew?” Parker interrupted, curious.

“You knew,” Eliot said.

“We just thought you’d tell us when you were ready,” said Alec.

“And how do you think you would have taken that?” Eliot snapped, crossing his arms and giving them a pointed look. “Hey guys, I’m Eliot and I punch people, and oh, by the way, the army gave me lycanthropy? C’mon, man!”

Alec met Parker's eye, shrugged, and said, unfazed, “I think we took it alright.”

He didn't look angry, or betrayed, or disgusted in any way which was, well, frustrating (but wasn't everything about Alec?). They had gotten better at that, over the years. At taking Eliot's temper with a grain of salt. It was surprisingly effective. Eliot rubbed his forehead and sighed, his anger deflating like a marshmallow being taken out of the microwave. 

Parker came over to the table. “A couple of years ago, I told Hardison I thought people were like locks,” she said, her face thoughtful. “Complicated, frustrating things that needed patience and time. That’s what we thought you needed. And we know you.”

“Apparently better than I thought,” said Eliot. Strangely, it was only now starting to sink in, as he looked at them—that they were still here. “And even after last night, you two don't…?”

“We baked you a cake,” said Parker, suddenly.

Eliot looked up sharply, distracted. “You—what?” Cooking wasn't exactly in their bailiwicks. In fact, Parker and Hardison preparing food was something out of Eliot's worst nightmares, mainly because Parker liked to blow stuff up and Alec had a disturbing penchant for chemistry (and the two were not mutually exclusive). He looked around the pub for signs of destruction, but did not see any. “Really?”

“Well, Hardison used a mix, but I think that still counts?”

Alec blanched. “Woman, I _know_ how to bake, it’s not like I don’t know how to mix some damn flour and eggs—“

“It’s in the fridge,” Parker said, ignoring Alec. “I’ll get it.”

Eliot thought of telling them he had two honey crunch and pecan pies back at home, but this wasn’t really about the _cake_ as much as it was Hardison and Parker's _folie a deux_ that Eliot was somehow worth keeping. Even so, when Parker reappeared, Eliot bit his bottom lip because it more or less resembled a disaster on a platter.

It was a simple carrot cake, Eliot saw. Probably Betty Crocker, if the too-thick toppings and chunky body were anything to go by. They had covered it in plastic wrap so the icing was smeared messily along the sides.

It could not have been more beautiful.

The three of them ate knishes and onions in front of the big screen, which, in a moment of rarity, was turned off.  Eliot was not particularly hungry but he watched Parker and Hardison eat and make yummy sounds at his cooking, like they always did.

In a way it was sort of nice that they weren’t making it into a big thing. So he was a werewolf, sure, and they had known but hadn’t told him. It was funny, how they’d accepted it maybe even more than Eliot himself had.

“They weren’t dead, you know,” said Parker, breaking the silence.

Eliot blinked.

“Those guys, the other night. They were kind of, well,” Parker waved her hand, _“mauled,_ but they weren’t dead. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Eliot asked.

“No, the cake is.”

“Like she said, we know you, man,” Alec replied. “And,” he added, pointing, “I’m the one who had to drive your damn car back for you.”

Eliot bristled. “I—I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I know you didn’t,” Alec said, gently. “You never ask for anything.”

Eliot was silent for a moment. “This is gonna happen every month,” he said, finally. “I’m gonna compromise jobs. You two alright with that?”

“Then we’ll just have to do something about it, won’t we?” Alec said, his expression warm. “Government facility like that couldn’t have destroyed _all_ their research. Especially when the project was such a success.”

Eliot gestured to his body. "You call this a success?" he asked, an eyebrow raised. Alec seemed to find this funny and snorted.

"You damn right I am," he replied.

“Let’s go steal us an army file,” Parker said, with a Kid in the Candy Store kind of smile.

Eliot didn’t really know how he felt about that—at the idea of Parker or Hardison going anywhere near that place, or at how they were willing to just to help him out.

And maybe it was the onions and maybe it wasn’t, but for a moment there was something wet in his eye.

 

 

 

“You know you’re just _asking_ for Twilight jokes now?” Alec said to him later, as they were washing dishes. He rarely cooked but he always helped Eliot with the cleanup.

Instead of biting back like he normally would, the corner of Eliot’s mouth quirked up and he glanced at Alec sideways. “I thought I never asked for anything?” he said.

Parker, sitting lotus style on the counter next to the sink, reached over and patted Eliot’s hair. “You don’t need to,” she said.

 

 

 

Quinn did about just as well with a broken leg as Parker, meaning it wasn’t two days before he called Eliot out of sheer boredom.

“Survive the week?” Eliot asked, sympathetic. Leg, arm, ribs, it never got easier. Especially when the shows on TV were getting shittier by the season.

“If you mean, 'do I want to shoot a hole in my fifty-four inch widescreen,' then yes,” Quinn sighed. “But, seeing as Hardison paid my hospital bill, I suppose I can't complain too much.”

Eliot grinned. “Read a damn book, Quinn.”

“Perhaps dear Alec's largess will extend to my Kindle too,” Quinn mused. “After all you do owe me, Eliot.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll getcha all the classics,” Eliot grumbled good-naturedly.

“Because one of us has to have style.” There was a pause before Quinn spoke again. “I’m surprised you’re not still mad at me for getting your team into trouble,” he noted. “Once upon a time you’d have a man’s head for that.”

“You’ll make it up to me,” said Eliot, both forgiving and warning Quinn. And acknowledging that Quinn was right in that he _had_ changed.

Speaking of which. "Still don't like working with a team?" he asked. Quinn didn't need to see Eliot's half-wink to give a humored scoff on the other end.

"Alright, fine. It has its perks."

"Y'don't have to tell me," said Eliot, leaning back against the kitchen counter and readjusting the phone at his ear.

“You sound happy,” Quinn observed.

“Yeah?” Eliot supposed he was.

“Your team seems pretty okay with your, ah, condition.”

“They’re weird,” Eliot said.

Quinn, for some reason unknown to Eliot, chuckled at this. “Even so, was nice to work with them. I’d love to do it again sometime,” he admitted. “It was fun.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “Even the busted leg, huh?”

“Guess who I learned that from?”

Eliot laughed as he hung up. It startled him, not because he wasn’t used to laughing so openly (or not at someone else’s expense), but because of how easily it came.

Maybe he was happy. And maybe he was weird too, for being happy while being a lycanthrope, and maybe it was possible to be both when he’d thought that would never happen. When he'd thought it _should_ never happen.

Eliot got up and walked over to his fridge. Opening it, he was met with a leftover slice of Betty Crocker carrot cake that he probably wouldn’t eat. Parker and Hardison had insisted he take it.

Eliot took out the slice, wrinkling his nose at the processed batter smell, but also at the dash of nutmeg he knew wasn’t in the recipe that one of them had added in because _they_ knew it was one of his favorite baking spices. He thought of Alec, surfing the dark net and laughing at the sharks beneath the waves because he’d stared much worse in the eye on a full moon. He thought of Parker, Taser sticking out of her belt, stocking the pub freezer with meat and telling Eliot that they wanted him to stay with bad cooking and shoulder pokes and handcuffs in the shower.

As he placed the slice back in the fridge, Eliot found himself smiling again. Maybe he deserved it after all.

And no, not the cake.

 

 

_End._

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm becoming _that_ writer in the fandom, the one who writes the supernatural AU weird shit. And yes, this is the same person who wrote Leonard Snart as a leprechaun. I'd read a couple of unsatisfying "Eliot as a werewolf" fics, and at the time of starting this I had just binge-watched the first season of Being Human, all of which inspired me to experiment with the trope. 
> 
> This was fun for me to write, and I hope you all enjoyed!


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